State of Disconformity

There is a time in the life of the successful dictator when he wakes up in the middle of the night thinking that there is nothing between him and the mob. "Where are my middle classes?" he is apt to cry. Something of this sort has been happening to Dictator Franco in recent years. Decay and dissension in the once-powerful Falange Party movement has emphasized Franco's lonely position as head of state, led him to seek a broader base for his regime. Thus he has dickered with the oldtime monarchists and permitted the return of some of the liberal survivors of the republic he destroyed 20 years ago. Last week he was reaching out for support in the new generation, which has never known democracy and has no cautionary memory of the cruel civil war. The results were a shock for Franco.

The Council of Scientific Investigation, an agency of Franco's office, took an anonymous poll of some 400 Madrid University students, carefully selected from various faculties and home backgrounds to give a Gallup-type cross section of opinion. The students were asked what they thought of 1) the ruling minority, 2) the military leaders, 3) the university professors, 4) the church hierarchy.

Unconservative Answers. The questions put by Psychology Professor Jose Luis Pinillos were admittedly slanted "in favor of conservative attitudes," but the answers were anything but conservative: 74% accused the ruling minority of incompetence ("tricksters," "improvisors," "ignoramuses," were typical phrases) while 85% went farther, accusing it of immorality ("unscrupulous," "false," "defrauders," "spongers"). Of the military leaders, 90% of the students said they were incompetent ("ignoramuses," "routinists"), while 48% also said they were immoral ("women-chasing," "brutality," "drunkenness," were typical charges).

On the subject of professors, the students thought of themselves as a generation without maestros (i.e., great masters), not through lack of pedagogical talent, but because of the absence of authenticity, sincerity and dedication. On the church, 70% of the students thought the Spanish Roman Catholic Church's social policy unacceptable, while 65% believed that the church did not concern itself sufficiently with the working class. More than half the students accused church leaders of "ostentation" and "ambition."

Eighty per cent of the students believed that class hatred exists in Spain, and more than half blamed this on "abuses of the capitalist system." The political and economic solution to Spain's problems, 65% were convinced, must be a "socialist-type regime," and only one student in five thought that this could be achieved through conservative means. The hope of 60% of the students was for a political change that would give them freedom. This 60% was equally divided between monarchists and republicans, while only 20% listed themselves as totalitarians or Falangists.

The Venom of Materialism. Concluded Questioner Pinillos, putting the matter as delicately as possible:

"We found a widely diffused state of disconformity, held back in its practical consequences by collective fear, by economic ambitions and, above all, by the dearth of clear, constructive ideals . . . On the whole, the growing discontent and the lack of political experience leaves the field wide open for very probable action by minorities of the extreme left."

In a New Year's Eve message to the Spanish people, Franco took up the theme. Unrest among Spanish students and workers and dissatisfaction among some intellectuals, said Franco, are due to the "venom of materialism" propagated by radio broadcasts from Communist countries and "seconded by misguided Spaniards at home." What obviously disturbed him were the shattering results of the university poll, though his Spanish listeners could not know this, since no word of the poll has yet appeared in Spain's unfree press.

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